The construction of The Centre for Collaborative Interactive Digital Media (CCIDM) began in April 2010. The project consists of an in-fill in which two additional floors are being created above the "The Great Hall of Computing” and the renovation of a significant part of the 5th floor of the Bahen Centre for Information Technology.

The CCIDM will be a geographic centre for research in areas related to digital media.These areas include: systems, networks, mobile computing, databases, computer vision, computer graphics and human-computer interaction.The latter two have been amalgamated as the Dynamic Graphics Project (dgp) for more than 40 years, but over the years, the need for a more diverse facility has grown.In addition, the Centre will include participation from the extra-departmental institute, Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI), with which many people in the department are affiliated.

Describing the impact the CCIDM will have on the department, DCS faculty member and the project’s Principal Investigator, Eugene Fiume states “This is an exciting step for DCS and will greatly enhance research in digital media at the University of Toronto.”

Some of the new facilities in the design include:

A usability lab, in which HCI experiments can be performed

A 3D display research lab for new display technologies

A large active display room for large-format displays

An image acquisition lab to extract properties of objects from images

A media production lab, which would include motion-capture equipment

Several new systems and mobility labs

A common information hub for informal gatherings

A large number of smaller graduate research labs in aid of collaborative research

The project is proceeding in two major phases. The first phase is the in-fill, in which steel and concrete is used to construct the new floors/ceilings, along with preliminary electrical and mechanical work. This phase is almost complete.The second phase involves construction of the new facility and will proceed in two stages.First, the in-fill area will be constructed and largely finished.Then the surrounding area, including the existing systems areas and dgp will be renovated / reconstructed.A short but dramatic staircase will link the fourth and fifth floors of the CCIDM.

The $6 million project will be funded primarily by the Federal Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Infrastructure Fund and by the Provincial Ministry for Research and Innovation from the Ontario Research Fund (MRI / ORF).

UPDATE (Dec 2011): The department is pleased to report that the CCIDM project has been going very well, and is near completion. An announcement will be going out in January 2012 with more details about the space and the exciting research taking place within it.

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